Thursday, 30 June 2016

We
the People: The Modern-Day Figures Who Have Reshaped and Affirmed the
Founding Fathers' Vision of America

by
Juan Williams

Crown

ISBN:
978-0307952042

Copyright
April 2016

Hardcover,
464 Pages

We
the People
is an exceptionally well-written, immensely engaging, and
effortlessly understandable book filled to the brim with incredibly
thought-provoking and inspiring narratives. The book is astutely and
refreshingly anchored upon the notion of America's “original
Founding Fathers”—“the fifty-six men who signed the Declaration
of Independence in 1776 and the fifty-five men who attended the
Constitutional Convention in 1787”—as a springboard for
examinations of an assemblage of modern Founding Fathers—the “new
founding family for today's America.”

Perspectives
harbored by America's original Founding Fathers were
demystified—their calls for a secular government apparently were
not in consideration of the “best interests of American democracy,”
but rather were “simply means of discriminating against religions
that the Protestant Founders and their progeny they didn't like:
namely Catholicism and Judaism.” Significantly, debates regarding
the Second Amendment in the context of maintaining a “well-regulated
militia,” and as the solution to concerns about “a too-powerful
national army” transformed into the 21st
century dialogue of the right to bear arms for self-defense or
hunting.

Similarly,
the author highlighted the fact that as the U.S. military shouldered
the responsibility of “countering communism throughout the world,”
it undoubtedly represents “a far cry from the Founding Fathers'
original concept of local militias.” A further assortment of
interesting details pertaining to the Founding Fathers were further
explored—“most historians” argue that the Founding Fathers'
beliefs were shaped by Deism; they committed to an economic policy
prescribing minimal governmental role in the economy, along with
“limited taxation and small protectionist policies.” And in an
utterly lucid manner, the author communicated other important
distinctions; “the Founding Fathers knew nothing about the
Thirteenth Amendment (ending slavery), the Fourteenth Amendment
(giving equal rights to all citizens, including blacks), or the
Fifteenth Amendment (giving black men the right to vote).”

The
book spotlights instrumental figures both renowned and less familiar
to the American public. President John F. Kennedy, Senator Ted
Kennedy, and President Ronald Reagan are amongst the famed
individuals discussed. The author chronicled the inspirational
stories of the Kennedys who “drastically reformed America's
immigration policy,” and explored President Reagan's, along with
his attorney general Ed Meese's, role in leading to the appointment
of partisan justices—those “who believed in a strict reading of
the Constitution as the basis for all decisions”—to the Supreme
Court, including Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Clarence
Thomas, Anthony Kennedy, and Antonin Scalia.

Distinctly
captivating was the survey of Jesse Jackson—the “President of
Black America” and successor to Martin Luther King Jr.—and the
famed economist Milton Friedman. Jackson and King were credited for
laying the groundwork for the “political possibility” of a black
president, “a reality incomprehensible to the Founding Fathers;”
Jackson did so by being a forceful crusader for “black capitalism,”
for the maximization of the value of “black political power,” and
by further normalizing the notion of a black running for the
presidential nomination.

Friedman,
on the other hand, was highlighted for his “economic
counterrevolution against Keynes's theory”—he who established
himself as the leading economist for “America's small-government
conservatives, libertarians, and Republicans,” and known for his
influential economic ideology of the free market and opposition to an
activist government. On an interesting note, Friedman's
small-government, free-market approach was said to parallel the
thinking of Founding Father and former president Thomas Jefferson.
Presumably as a bonus, the author inserted a concise list comprising
13 bulleted points pertaining to facets of the market to which
Friedman expressed his opposition, of which includes the Food and
Drug Administration, and the national parks.

Eleanor
Roosevelt—the longest-serving First Lady in American history, “the
most activist First Lady the nation had ever seen,” and the first
chair of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights—Rachel
Carson, the author of the 1962 book Silent
Spring,
and Betty Friedan, writer of The
Feminine Mystique,
represent the only three women spotlighted in the book. Roosevelt is
revered for her proclamation of “universal rights for all people”
beyond the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the
Bill of Rights; Carson is acclaimed for inspiring “the Clean Air
Act, the Clean Water Act, the Environmental Protection Agency, and
the National Environmental Policy Act,” and for sparking the
nation's environmental discourse with her book expounding the dangers
of the pesticide DDT; and Friedan, owing to the success of her book,
was extolled for launching the contemporary feminist movement, and
for inducing “intense discussions of gender equality”
unprecedented in postwar America.

Other
less known, but nonetheless comparably pivotal, figures discussed in
the book include Robert Ball, a leader in the Social Security
Administration under both Democratic and Republican presidents—and
one
whom without which
“there would be no Social Security, no Medicare to provide
healthcare for the elderly, no Medicaid to provide healthcare for the
poor, and certainly no Affordable Care Act in the twenty-first
century”—and George Meany, the head of the American Federation of
Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), and
a
paramount figure in America's labor movement, and for setting the
21st
century “middle-class employment” framework in the country.

Other
similarly captivating narratives
were that of General William Westmoreland, for having established
“the basis for the modern American military” as he reconstructed
the military to an “all-volunteer force” comprising of
“professional soldiers;” Bill
Bratton, who
“transformed modern policing” by
demonstrating the
effectiveness ofdata-driven
approach to policing,
by applying the theory of “broken windows” policing, and whose
crime-fighting
techniques were religiously
spread
coast to coast; Harry Hay, the
creator of the
first major US gay rights group, the Mattachine Society, in 1951; and
Henry Kissinger, a preeminent
intellectual force in American foreign policy.

A
historical gem, the
book also recounts for example, the history of the National Rifle
Association (NRA)—America's most powerful gun lobbying group—in
its transition from an apolitical group to one spouting a “harsh,
hostile political voice,” and even its role in a poignant bombing
of a
federal government office building housing ATF offices—the Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms offices—in
Oklahoma City which
killed 168
people. Significantly,
the book also educates fellow Americans on other critical pieces of
historical information, such as the “Economic Bill of Rights”
called for by President Roosevelt, and the
Bill of Rights for Women adopted by the National Organization for
Women in 1967.

In
other instances, even brief mentions of for example, the 1794 Whiskey
Rebellion—a revolt “against the federal government's right to
collect excise taxes on distilled liquor”—or
“The Lavender Scare” expressing the combination of “homophobia
and anti-communism,”ought
to be appreciated for intellectually
stimulating the reader and even its potentiality in encouraging one
to conduct independent studies on the specific subject matter beyond
the book.

The
discussion of pertinent legislations represent yet another
outstanding facet of the book. There were references to for example,
the notorious McCarran Walter Act which granted
officials the authority and “wide latitude” to deny visas to
potential immigrants associated with communists in their native
countries, or
the Taft-Hartley
Act intended to restrain the growth of unions. On
a more positive note, there was the Clayton Act—the “Magna Carta”
of American labor rights—which legalized strikes and boycotts, and
the Norris-La Guardia Act which illegalized coercion of workers by
employers “to
sign contracts that banned unions from their job sites.”

The
moderate sampling of illustrative legal cases was also outstanding.
The 1954 Brown
v. Board of Education
case was one alluded to most frequently, and aptly each time, in the
book; the landmark ruling administered in the Supreme Court under the
leadership of Chief Justice Earl Warren. The author accentuated a
paradox—Chief Justice Warren was the man who called for the
internment of, and
stripped the constitutional rights of,
Japanese Americans after
the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In a further extension, the
Korematsu
v. U.S.
case was
mentioned as an exemplification of a
Supreme Court decision upholding
the constitutionality of the Japanese American internment.

Disclaimer:
I received a complimentary copy of this book from Blogging for Books
for this review.

The
Price of Prosperityis
a prized
gem
for history and
politics enthusiasts.
The
book is densely packed with a myriad of historically-informed
perspectives and
content strategically
positioned to elucidate
fundamental political
and
economical
themes,supplemented
with
modicums of psychological and philosophical pieces
of information, and which concluded with an
encapsulating
eight-item
“Patriotist Manifesto.”

Part
II of the book is
pointedly and
considerably moreengaging
andfascinating
than
Part
I. Whilst
Part I dealt with the
rather
familiar themes of “falling
birthrates,” “globalized trade,” “rising debt loads,”
“eroding work ethics,” and
“the challenge of patriotism in a multicultural country,” Part
II comparatively
treads
the more unusual
realm of captivating historical
case studies, prominent
leader biographies,
and
most outstanding, clearly delineated lessons gleaned from them.

It
was amazing to learn about formidable
leaders whofaced
and overcame “almost
insurmountable odds in weaving together a frayed nation.” Prominent
leaders examined include Mustafa
Kemal Ataturk, Turkey's
first president, and
an exceptional booster of women's rights,one
who relentlessly polished the
concept of Turkishness,
as he vigorously
fought
to transform a nation of Turks who previously “had been taught to
be ashamed of their very name;” Golda Meir, former
prime
minister of Israel and
an
early leader of the Zionists, who
admirably
defied chauvinistic men, and
fearlessly “barrel[led]
through the gender barriers of pioneer builders and politicians;”
and
Don
Pepe, one
who took
power as the leader of the “Founding Junta of the Second Republic
of Costa Rica,” and
who was positioned in
the book to
address an
intriguing question—the
possibility for a country to “rebuild
its pride, its democracy, and its economy,” in
the shadow of the
leader whom “once
took up arms in a way that could be described as terrorism.”
Comprehensively
dealt with was the
legendary Alexander the Great, one
notably lauded for his innovative
and successful battle strategies, his
ingenious “balanced
hellenization” scheme, and
unifying practice of calling
his compatriots and soldiers “Companions”—“a Homeric term”
that
“conferred
both honor and death-defying responsibility.”

The
exploration
of the Meiji Revolution was superbly
illuminating and interesting, bolstered by the
discussions of prominent
figures such
as
the samurai
Sakamoto Ryoma, and
theprolific
intellectual Fukuzawa Yukichi; Ryoma
was an
original leader of the “expel the barbarian” movement, while
the Japanese 10,000-yen
note today
contains an image of Yukichi.
The
Iwakura mission where
the Japanese explored Western
societies and
sailed upon
the SS America,
was
astounding, especially the way it informed subsequent reinventions of
the Japanese economy and reordering of “social
priorities.” It
was intriguing, and somewhat hilarious to read about the Japanese
“Institute for the Investigation of Barbarian Books” which
was established
to study
“trains, trolleys, and rickshaws.”

Distinctly
memorable
was
the way the author introduced Ataturk.
The
start of a paragraph went, “Mustafa
Kemal Ataturk was born May 19 1881, in Salonica, Greece. Nearly
everything about that sentence is wrong.” This
reasonably successfully catches
and secures
the reader's attention, as
Buchholz then proceeded to shed light on
the statement's
points
of contention.

Another
standout include
the instance where Buchholz went about illustrating
globalization and the “wonders of free trade,” by
invoking the manufacturing of a pencil—a seemingly simple good
often
conveniently taken for granted today in developed countries—“To
construct a pencil you need to be able to get to a place like Oregon
and learn how to chop down a big tree. But first you would need steel
for the saw. So you would need to fly to an iron mine in Brazil and
strap on a miner's helmet. Then make your way to Pittsburgh to figure
out how to turn iron ore into steel. Do not forget the pencil's metal
tip, graphite center, and runner eraser. They require trips to Sri
Lanka and Indonesia.”

The
selection of historical
examples within
the book are excellently illustrative. As an ancient and
negative
example of outsourcing,
Venice's impolitic decision to outsource their military, and
thus their safety
was
said to plunge
the republic into “mortal danger.” In
attempts to “buy
back naval loyalty” from
the Ottomans
which
offered the Venetian
navy “more gold,” hiked
taxes on workers and businessmen in
turn squashed
the economy. Or
the example of Cincinnatus,
the Roman farmer-statesman, was
an apt embodiment
of one able to remarkably confidently “walk away from absolute
power.”

Some
historical examples postured to reinforce the author's predominant
premise—of
the “price of prosperity,” forces that undermine economically
successful nations—include
that of the fall of the Republic
of Ragusa as
“it
was too rich to stay a free republic;” the
evaporation of Sparta
as
it “gained
wealth and lost the need and urge to procreate;” and
the termination
of
some “fearsome”
“2 million” Japanese samurai by “peace and prosperity.”

A
particularly
profoundconcept
highlighted by the author was the divergence between the US Treasury
and many successful corporations in terms of bond issuance; in what
Buchholz attributed to “shrewd political self-interest and a bias
toward the short term,” the US Treasury notably shied away from
issuing 100-year bonds, opting instead for short-term
funds that must be rolled over. Buchholz
reinforced his point with extensive examples, specifically
the “Sleeping Beauty” bonds issued by Disney,
100-year debt issued
by companies like
“Coca-Cola, IBM, Federal Express, and Ford,” and
even byinstitutions
of higher education such
as“the
University of Pennsylvania, Ohio State, the University of Southern
California, and Yale.”

Some
matters in the book were cursorily handled, but captivating
nonetheless—a
point of differentiation highlighted
between
the Israeli Declaration of Independence and
the US Declaration; thedistinction
between a
patriot versus
a patriotist, and
briefly illustrated with the
example of President Reagan; and
a look at the antipatriotist
thought,
exemplified by
thinkers such as Howard Zinn.

The
multi-disciplinary approach adopted
by the
book, though
not exhaustive,also
deserves appreciation. In
addition to
naming a psychology acronym, BIRG, which describes the tendency for
people to “bask in the reflected glory” of their group, the
author provided a satisfactory
exploration of thepsychological
phenomenon of
the
desire for superiority, by
citing figures such as Sigmund
Freud, a
19th
century British economist and social philosopher Nassau William
Senior, and
the economist
Robert H. Frank of Cornell. In
another instance, he noted the term “segmented assimilation”—in
the context of
describing
immigrants—as coined by Princeton
sociologist Alejandro Portes.

Depending
on the specific reader, he or she may or may not appreciate certain
instances where the
author's personal voice shines through most
evidently. Buchholz himself suggested a
“new and useful ratio” to
interpret the sustainability of a nation, statues
per young citizen;
he
labelled the nostalgic
twinge experienced
at
the costs of modernization as
“melancholia
madeleine;”
he
asserted that the
“stuck-at-home” mentality, and
as manifested by the ever increasing proportion of young
adults living at home, to be “the Occupy movement we should really
be worried about;” and
in noting globalization as the ignition behind“forces
of entropy,”
rather cheekily wrote that “Generation
Y is turning into Generation Y bother.”

Research
conducted by the author is commendable. To authenticate his claim
that
“countries could die,” Buchholz noted
the mere 325
days the Republic of Belgium lasted in 1790, and
the 211
days the Republic of Genoa made it throughin
1814. The
example of the instance where the
American flag was banned from the campus of the University of
California at Irvine, along
with its purported rationale, and the discussion of the
significance of volunteerism figures in Miami versus that of Las
Vegas, was
greatly refreshing.

Whilst
the book might be a daunting read and not necessarily effortlessly
understandable at times, the author's efforts
at presenting the material
as lucidly and
as accessible
as
possiblecan
be discerned. In
a
discussion
on debt, he drew attention to a key phrase “to focus on”—“skin
in the game,” to refer to “an
economic actor” having
“a personal stake in the outcome of an event.” In
explaining
the
federal
government's
involvement in the banking loan industry, he
very simply wrote, when “people
act as if they have less skin in the game, trust goes down. What goes
up? The appeal of get-rich-quick schemes.”

Recognizing
that Part I of the book is more-or-less salvaged by the author's
injection of a fresh slant through select examples and data, in
addition to the five major themes being positioned as potentially
able to “shatter
a rich nation,” it
is however incontrovertible that the coverage of material at
the beginning of the book
appeared
rather
rehashed, shallow,
and commonplace—without
providing new insights, the author was merely restating known pieces
of information such as the
Keynes's “paradox of thrift” model, the
phenomenon of “creative destruction” accompanied by the very
typical example of Uber
drivers versus city cab drivers, the
brief mention of the relative aptness
of the “melting
pot” versus the
“salad
bowl” metaphor to
describe
the cosmopolitan society, and
even dedicating
a disproportionate amount of words explaining
the commonly accepted knowledge that “people
lose cognitive abilities when they retire early.” As
for the simple explanation
of “leverage” and “extrapolation,” the
reader would likely appreciate the
insertion of less
known perspectives or additional
relevant
information, that
could potentially set the author apart from the marketplace.

It
was also somewhat a letdown to begin reading chapter 1 of the book
just to encounter
the
issue
of falling
birthrates being
dealt
in its all-too-common configurations. There were great arguments
pertaining to rising
prosperity bringing
about falling birthrates,
and
the ordering of the material was very apparently structured to form a
basis
for later
arguments. The
book however could
leave a better first impression if it settled for a more impactful,
exciting,
and memorable
start,
or
a more concise rendition of the
crux of the issue, as
opposed to plunging
substantially and
immediately into descriptions of highly
familiar trends such as the prioritization
of male over female babies,
the widely
known correlation of
“more education” with
“fewer children,” and
the typical
argument of children, in past eras, being comparatively
seen
as indispensable working,
economic
assets.

Disclaimer:
I received a complimentary copy of this book from HarperCollins
Publishers for this review.